


The Water Where I'm Wading

by DoubleNegative



Series: Be The Ocean [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Johnlock Roulette, M/M, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant, Post-Reichenbach, Romance, Second Time, Sexual Content, Smut, a little bit of angst, but not really about post-Reichenbach problems, overly poetic sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-09 06:19:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1142506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoubleNegative/pseuds/DoubleNegative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the first time, John isn't alone when he wakes up from a nightmare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Water Where I'm Wading

**Author's Note:**

> Just in case you missed it in the tags: this is not S3 compliant. As an FYI.

John wakes up gasping, surging upright with the smell of sweat and blood and bile still heavy in his nostrils. The unfamiliar bed and unfamiliar room in which he finds himself do nothing to ease the tremors that wrack his body and for a few long seconds it takes all his concentration simply to regulate his breathing.

_In and hold. Out and hold. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat._

The door opens, just a crack, and John whips his head around, squinting against the sudden light.

“John?” Sherlock asks, softly.

John exhales in a long shaky rush, letting some of the tension ease out of his shoulders and relaxing his death grip on the duvet. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m okay. Hope I didn’t disturb you.”

“You didn’t,” Sherlock says, still not moving from his place in the door. He’s feeling uncharacteristically awkward, John can tell, uncertainty radiating off him in waves. Nothing at all like he’d been earlier in the evening, when they’d come together for the first time, flying on the high of another successful case. Sherlock had advanced on him hungrily, his eyes dark with desire and confident intent. John had nodded once, pinned in place by the sudden surge of want burning in his own belly. After that it had been a crush of teeth and tongues and sweat-slick skin, and _god_ , John couldn’t remember the last time he’d come so hard. They’d managed to make it as far as Sherlock’s room, by the end, and had more or less fallen asleep where they fell. Sherlock, evidently, had not remained that way for long.

“Sherlock?” John whispers.

Sherlock looks up, still hovering in the door. John can’t read the expression on his face, not with the way the hallway light casts him into silhouette, but his whole body seems tense and unsure.

“Come back to bed?” John asks, softly. “Just for a bit?”

Sherlock relaxes instantly. “Yes,” he says, shedding his dressing gown and climbing in next to John in a few swift movements. He was naked beneath the dressing gown, and his skin feels cool where he’s pressed up against John’s side, but he’s comfortingly solid and his heartbeat is steady.

“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” John says, into the stillness that’s settling back around them. “If you want to get back to whatever you were doing, I’ll just--”

“It’s fine,” Sherlock replies, and something in his tone makes John pull him in a little closer. It’s been nearly a year that Sherlock’s been back, that he’s been miraculously _not dead_ , and John is finally able to forget, for entire days at a stretch, sometimes, that he was ever gone. He remembers now. Sherlock came back with new wariness and new scars, and when John finally moved back in, he discovered he was no longer the only one in the flat who sometimes woke gasping, tangled in the sheets and soaked in a cold sweat.

God, what a pair they make.

Sherlock nudges John onto his side and curls up behind him with his nose buried in John’s hair and an arm wrapped protectively around his chest, with one large hand coming to rest right over John’s scar. The gesture is inexpressibly tender and entirely unexpected, and for a second John has to physically bite his lip to keep himself from declaring his love for Sherlock right then and there.

Gradually, the remaining tension seeps from John’s muscles, though he’s no longer tired. He has miles of consulting detective pressed along his back, huffing warm breaths into his neck, and John is not surprised to find himself growing hard. Sherlock, behind him, is in the same state, although John can tell he’s trying to shift subtly away in hopes that John won’t notice. John pushes back against him instead, relishing the hard line of heat pressing against the backs of his thighs, and Sherlock stifles a gasp. He rolls his hips again, reaching one arm back to grab Sherlock’s thigh.

“John, are you sure you want--” Sherlock begins.

John rolls to face him, cutting off his protests and sliding his knee between Sherlock’s legs, rocking his hips up to slot their erections together. “I’m sure,” he says. “I want. Please.”

“Anything,” Sherlock whispers, snaking a hand around to cradle John’s cheek. “Anything.” He kisses him then, soft and tender, as though John is precious, as though he is unblemished and whole. John wonders briefly, before the kiss simply sweeps him out to sea, if Sherlock is also biting back a declaration. It seems unlikely, but...

Sherlock kisses him for a long time, rolling on top of him and cupping his face with his hands. That shouldn’t be as much of a turn-on as it is, and yet--this is Sherlock. Everything about the man seems to live in the “shouldn’t be--and yet.” They slide against each other with the sort of languid slowness that only ever comes in the middle of the night, as if any sudden movement would shatter the stillness and wake the sleeping city that surrounds them. Here in the warm dark of Sherlock’s room, the urgency from earlier in the evening has faded, replaced by this quiet gentle tangle that nonetheless has John aching with arousal, whimpering desperately against Sherlock’s mouth, his neck, his collarbone.

Sherlock opens him up with a slow patience John would never guess he possessed. By the time he finally slides in--in one long, torturously slow stroke--John is sweat-soaked and begging. Sherlock seems equally affected: he waits a long time before he begins to thrust, and though John is desperate, pressing up against Sherlock needily, urging him on, Sherlock waits, eyes shut tight and breathing deeply. After what seems an age, he begins to move, pushing into John with long, deep strokes that leave them both breathless. With every stroke, John can feel his nightmare fading. Every slick sound of flesh on flesh drives the screaming and the dying a little further away. Sherlock’s arm looped under his knee, Sherlock’s hand braced over his shoulder, the rustle of the sheets and the creak of the bed frame beneath them: these things remind him of where he is, carry him back across oceans and continents, back to London, back to the present.

John wraps his other leg a little tighter around Sherlock’s waist and reaches up to thread his fingers through Sherlock’s hair--now sweat-damp and curling madly--pulling him down for another kiss.

“John,” he gasps. “Don’t, I can’t--I can’t last if you--if you kiss me--”

“Don’t want you to,” John replies, slanting their mouths together, clumsy and uncoordinated as the beginnings of his orgasm crackle along his spine. He slips his free hand between their bodies to touch himself, and Sherlock shudders where his knuckles graze his stomach. “Come on, please, I want to feel you, _please_.”

Sherlock thrusts into him a few more times, his movements and his breath growing increasingly ragged, before he drops his head into John’s shoulder. John can feel his cock pulsing inside him, can feel Sherlock’s teeth against his shoulder and the vibrations of his moan against his chest, and that is all it takes to send him over the edge, too, spilling hot and slick in the close space between their bodies.

They lie together in silence for a moment, panting, recovering, and there is no reason, _no reason at all_ , for John to feel as wrecked by this as he does, but… _god_ , that had been intense. Sherlock rolls off him with a soft noise, and John cannot resist the urge to stare, just for a moment, in the dim light of the room. Sherlock’s eyes remain closed and the color is high on his cheeks. His chest is still heaving a little from exertion, his breath puffing out in short pants, and John is once again struck by the sheer unfair _beauty_ of the man.

John doesn’t imagine he’ll get to see him like this again.

A casual, adrenaline-fueled fuck after a case is one thing, but this… John hates the syrup of the phrase “making love,” but even he will admit that the expression is sometimes apt. And it felt frighteningly apt just now, with the words hovering behind his teeth, flavoring every gasp and kiss. And there is no way, simply no way, that Sherlock didn’t taste it, too. He will open his eyes, he will smile a little sadly at John, and he will leave the bedroom, leave John, and in the morning, it will be as if it never happened at all. Not even an aberration: a non-event--because things that have never happened can never be repeated.

After all, it was not Sherlock who has reneged on their unspoken deal. Sherlock has been straightforward from the very beginning. He is unattached, except to his work. He and John are friends, flatmates, colleagues, but never once has Sherlock indicated that he might want more than that, and John is not naive enough to think that being pinned up against a wall and snogged senseless is an indicator of anything other than a convergence of post-case euphoria and adrenaline-induced need. If John is suddenly incapable of separating love and sex, well, that’s hardly Sherlock’s fault, unexpectedly tender kisses be damned.

Sherlock sighs into the pillow before reaching one long arm over the edge of the bed and snatching a t-shirt from the floor to clean up with. He wipes himself off and hands it over, curling on his side to face John and pulling the duvet over himself as he does so.

“You’re thinking far too hard for someone who’s just had his second orgasm of the evening,” Sherlock says, though the sated, sleepy look in his eyes softens the bite of the words.

“Not really,” John says, wiping himself down and tossing the shirt back over the side of the bed. He turns to face Sherlock, tries very hard to keep his tone casual. “Just... you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.” He tries not to look as though he’s bracing himself. “Or I could go back to my room. If you want.”

Sherlock frowns at him. “Why would you do that?”

“I--if you want your bed back. I don’t want to, um. Disturb you.”

“I’ve already said you didn’t disturb me. I want you to stay. _I_ want to stay.” Sherlock pauses, fleetingly, just long enough for his features to snap into a mask of indifference. “Unless you’d rather sleep alone.”

“I want to stay,” John says, and fervently hopes that they aren’t still talking about just tonight. “I want you to stay.”

Sherlock’s face relaxes instantly and with it, the tightness around John’s heart. “Good,” Sherlock says. “No one’s leaving. It’s settled.” He reaches out a tentative hand to rest on John’s hip, and John slides closer, into his touch, and tips his head forward to brush a kiss against Sherlock’s hair.

He can still taste the words on his lips, and he thinks Sherlock probably can too, but they’ll keep. He is sure now that they will keep.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from "I Follow Rivers" by Lykke Li:
> 
> Oh I beg you, can I follow?  
> Oh I ask you, why not always?  
> Be the ocean, where I unravel  
> Be my only, be the water where I’m wading
> 
> You’re my river running high  
> Run deep, run wild
> 
> I, I follow, I follow you  
> Deep sea, baby, I follow you  
> I, I follow, I follow you  
> Dark doom, honey, I follow you
> 
> **
> 
> Many thanks, as usual, to my betas Alter and madrona629. Your ideas are good and you should feel good.


End file.
